


Life

by entanglednow



Category: Robin Hood (TV)
Genre: Incest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-05
Updated: 2009-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-17 10:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he stops being dead, and returns to something very much more resembling life, he almost wishes he hadn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life

The world is a blurred jumble of intent and hard words, but mostly pain. The pain is the one thing that will briefly bring the world into bright, sharp focus. A face, a wall, a sway of blue sky and the angry creak of wooden wheels on dirt, too loud and too close.

Guy is not entirely sure which parts are real and which are the cracked pieces of fever dreams.

He thinks he might be dying.

In the cold white spaces between the pain he's certain he's there already.

But the pain always comes back eventually and with it the world. Which is, perhaps, as it should be. Not every moment in Guy's life has been pain. But it's been a constant for so long he almost doesn't trust a world without it.

Once he thinks he catches fabric in his fingers, a jolt that stabs unpleasantly through him when its owner moves, and then there are fingers in his own, long and smooth and impossibly warm, one brief tight clasp.

And then nothing.

He thinks perhaps he's dead for a while then.

It's altogether more dark and quiet than he had been led to believe.

When he stops being dead, and returns to something very much more resembling life, he almost wishes he hadn't.

The pain has none of the earlier cloak of fever or madness. Instead it has a vicious clarity which drags him all the way into life, willing or not.

He's alone, though the first breath he takes saws out into the silence, half cry and half confusion and then he's no longer alone.

He's tipped dizzyingly onto his side and it's suddenly almost impossible to breathe, all the air crushed out of his lungs in one excruciatingly painful exhale. He tries to drag himself away, slips back into darkness and then out again.

"Guy, Guy you have to stop moving."

He half recognises the voice but the tone is jarringly wrong. There's an insistence that swings between fierce and gentle. Though he's certain it's never cared about his welfare before.

The hands relax when he stops trying to pull himself free. Though they don't let him go. They hold him while he drags in thin lungfuls of air.

The world doesn't fade away again. It sharpens, an unpleasant and raw collection of sensations.

"Guy?"

He wants to react to his name, to prove he's still alive. But it seems a more monumental task that he's capable of. There's a throbbing ache deep inside his back, like someone left a sword in there. He wonders, dizzyingly, if that _is_ actually the case. But then he remembers that he died.

He remembers dying.

Voices talk over him, though he can't hear or understand what they're saying, shapes moving above him that blur in and out between the leaves and his own eyelids.

Until Archer turns him again, eases him over onto his side and Guy's breath wheezes out of him uncomfortably. The ache twisting and stabbing like something that means to eat him from the inside out.

"This is going to hurt," Archer warns quietly, his voice sounds faraway in the darkness.

Guy thinks he grunts something in reply, but he can't be certain.

And then it does hurt. It feels like Archer is digging knives inside him, and Guy doesn't have the strength or the coordination to pull away again.

He thinks he screams.

There's a sharply indrawn breath behind him that he thinks is apology and then it's _worse._

It hurts too much to bear.

Guy briefly fights the darkness, it's a primitive fear that has him resisting, a fear that if he leaves he'll never be allowed to return. But pain swells like a living thing, and he has no choice but to surrender to it.

He thinks he stays in the darkness for a long time.

...

He gradually becomes aware of a hand in his hair, fingers carefully dragging it off of his face and around the curve of his ear. It's a curious sensation, a foreign sensation, but he keeps his eyes closed for endless minutes under the drag of warmth across his skin.

Eventually he opens them, and finds himself in the half light of Robin's camp. Pieces of the past and present tangle confusingly. He doesn't remember any of the places in-between. How he got here, what happened, and how he survived? They're just long stretches of time, stolen away while he was dying. Or not dying apparently. The camp's quiet, there's a stillness that seems almost unnatural. As though something is missing.

There's a hole where Robin should be. Guy knows without having to be told that Robin Hood is dead. Though he's surprised by the fact that he feels nothing at all. As if Robin was something that happened a long time ago.

He turns his head carefully, absurdly grateful when all it brings is a shudder of only half remembered pain. Archer's hand slips free, like it was never there. He looks down at Guy like he's been waiting for a long time.

"Welcome back, brother."


End file.
